Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (14 page)

“There.” Ms. Sutland sat across from her. She
lifted the tea while the men came back with the hand truck and
began loading a grandfather clock. “Isn’t this pleasant?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jenny said. “But why—”

“Your mother used to come here,” Ms. Sutland
said. “Pretty girl with the blue eyes. I remember.”

“You do?” Jenny asked. “What was she
like?”

“Oh, she was just the nicest little thing,”
Ms. Sutland said. “Always bought something, too. Even if it was
just a refrigerator magnet, salt shaker, something small.”

“Did you talk with her much?” Jenny
asked.

“Some. She always had friends around her,
though. Always laughing. Didn’t stay and talk like you do.”

Jenny sipped her tea, not sure what to
say.

“She always said she wanted a daughter,” Ms.
Sutland said. “She did say that a time or two. Looking at the cribs
and children’s furniture.” Ms. Sutland nodded toward an empty
corner.

“Where is everything going, Ms. Sutland?”
Jenny asked.

“Oh, all of this?” Ms. Sutland waved her hand
around. “Well, it’s just shameful to say how far behind I am on the
rent. The Barretts are so nice about it, such lovely people, the
Barretts. Don’t you think?”

“I like one or two of them,” Jenny said.

“Mrs. Barrett even shops here. The young Mrs.
Barrett. Haven’t seen the old Mrs. Barrett in ten, twenty
years.”

“You mean Seth’s grandmother?”

Ms. Sutland’s forehead wrinkled, and she
toyed absently with her tea spoon.

“Are you…moving the store?” Jenny asked.
“Where are those men taking your stuff?”

“Listen, Jenny,” Ms. Sutland said. “Have you
ever used a computer?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, on the computer, there is a thing
called eBay,” Ms. Sutland said. “You just take a photo of whatever
you’re selling, and then all kinds of people offer to buy it. Can
you believe a thing like that?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Jenny said.

“So my nephew insisted on putting up some
pictures of things, on the eBay computer,” Ms. Sutland said. “Some
of them things I’ve had forever. And do you know that I found
buyers for just about everything? Not always at a price I’d like.
But then, for a few items, some people offered too much, in my
opinion, but I suppose you have to take the highest bid.”

“That’s good, Ms. Sutland! So you’re not
closing up the store, right? You’re sticking around?”

“Goodness, no,” Ms. Sutland said. Her voice
dropped to a whisper. “Some terrible things happened here.” She
nodded out toward the green. “Not everyone understands it. But I
saw it the day after Easter. I came to open the store, and there
were such horrors…” Ms. Sutland shuddered. “I shouldn’t even speak
of what I saw that morning. Before sunrise, even.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jenny said.

“I called the police chief, but nobody
answered, so then I called the governor’s office.”

“The state governor?”

“You would not believe how difficult it is to
get the governor on the telephone,” Ms. Sutland said. “I told them
I’m a citizen with an emergency, but they still made me leave a
message. Can you believe that?”

“I sure can’t, Ms. Sutland.”

“Now how can I keep coming back here, every
day, after seeing a thing like that? I’ve been thinking about
pulling up and leaving out, anyway. None of my friends are left in
this town, except the ones in the cemetery.”

“I’m your friend,” Jenny said.

“Thank you, Jenny. But I want to live by the
ocean. And I want to move somewhere the people are nicer.”

Jenny laughed, but Ms. Sutland just gave her
a puzzled look, as if it hadn’t been a joke at all.

“I didn’t sell any of your things on the
computer.” Ms. Sutland pointed to the shelves near the front of the
store, where Jenny’s pottery was displayed.

“That’s okay.”

“I mean, I didn’t put it for sale on the
computer. Because, I thought, Jenny ought to put them for sale on
the computer herself.”

“Okay,” Jenny said. “So I need to take
everything home with me today?”

“That would probably be best,” Ms.
Sutlandsaid. “I’ll have to lock up the store when I leave.”

Jenny felt like crying. Ms. Sutlandhad always
been nice to Jenny, when nobody else was. Probably because she was
too eccentric to notice how weird Jenny was.

“You can’t go, Ms. Sutland,” Jenny said.
“This town won’t be the same if you leave.”

“The town already isn’t the same,” Ms.
Sutland said. “It’s a different place now.”

Jenny drank her tea and looked out the dusty
window at the town green.

Esmeralda studied the face of the dead man on
the table. Fernando Aguilar Ortiz had lived seventy-one years, and
his face was leathery from a lifetime of hot sunlight. Thick
calluses covered his hands. According to the pictures provided by
his family, he had a cheerful smile but a dark, serious look in his
eyes.

Her job was to bring him back to life for a
day.

Esmeralda glanced at the embalming room door
to make sure no one was coming. Then she touched her right hand to
his cold, stiff face.

Immediately, she was in the village of Rio
Pequeño in Mexico, caught in a swirl of bright costumes, the sound
of maracas and guitarron and vihuela, clapping hands, rhythmic
voices. It was a saint’s day festival, though she wasn’t sure which
one. She looked up as she held tight to the hand of an older man
with a gray beard.

This was Fernando Aguilar Ortiz’s first
memory.

His life unfolded around her. It had not been
a very easy one. When he was a little boy, a deadly fever had swept
through the village, taking several cousins, an older sister and a
younger brother, and his mother.

Fernando had attended a little bit of school
at the Catholic church in town, but mainly he worked for his
father, who raised goats. When he was sixteen, he fell in love with
a neighbor girl, Lucia, and they were married, but Lucia had not
survived her first childbirth. Neither had the child.

Soon after, Fernando made his way illegally
into America. He worked first on a farm, and then got a
better-paying job with a landscaping company. He met another girl
and married her, and they had five children. In time, he created
his own landscaping company with one of his good friends and two of
his sons. He had seventeen grandchildren, who gave him delight
without measure.

He’d been diagnosed with cancer when he was
sixty-nine. His two devoted sons and his eldest daughter came to
see him over the following two years, as did five of his
grandchildren. The others lived too far away or were too busy, and
this brought him sadness, but in his heart he forgave them.

He had died nine hours ago at the UCLA
hospital, with one son at his side.

That was Fernando Aguilar Ortiz’s last
memory.

Esmeralda had embalmed the body and dressed
it in the coat and tie provided by his family. Now the real
challenge began, using cosmetics to bring the semblance of life
back to his face. The art of the mortuary cosmetics included using
color to make the body appear to have a living circulatory system.
Small, careful traces of red mixed in at just the right spots could
bring a healthy and vital appearance to the deceased's face.

Once she had seen someone's life, Esmeralda’s
understanding of the person helped guide her in making up their
face and styling their hair. Maybe it was just small touches—a
little shading here and there—but she did her best to subtly bring
out the personality and emotional richness the deceased had
possessed. The final viewing created a lasting memory image for the
person's loved ones, and Esmeralda felt it was important that the
families have a positive experience.

And it was much better than working with the
living.

Esmeralda became absorbed in her work. On her
headphones, she listened to Vivaldi. Esmeralda had not always
listened to music while she worked, but in the last few weeks,
she’d had a few nightmares about work. In these dreams, the
embalming room stretched on forever, with mortuary tables as far as
she could see, each with a body waiting for her attention. She
couldn’t work fast enough—the bodies were rapidly decaying and
crumbling, putting her into a panic to preserve them.

Then a young man would slowly approach her,
tall and handsome, with dark, shaggy hair, and deep brown eyes that
were identical to her own. He had a dazzling smile. He would touch
each corpse as he passed it. At his touch, the corpse would sit up
on the mortuary table and turn to look at Esmeralda.

Esmeralda cranked up the volume on her
headphones and tried not to think about those dreams.

By six o'clock, Esmeralda had Mr. Ortiz
looking as if he were in perfect health, just taking a siesta on a
warm summer afternoon, instead of the gaunt and pale look with
which he'd arrived. She hoped the family would be pleased.

Esmeralda stripped off her gloves. Mr. Ortiz
was now dressed and styled for his family, and Jorge and Luis would
move him into his casket for the viewing.

She straightened up the embalming room,
washed her hands and rubbed them with sanitizer. She removed her
smock, said goodnight to the elder of the two Mr. Garcias, and
stepped outside.

Garcia y Garcia Funeral Home had operated in
eastern Los Angeles for more than twenty years. Esmeralda had
graduated high school two years earlier, and now she was two
classes away from her Associate of Applied Science in Funeral
Service degree. Technically, she was an intern at Garcia y Garcia,
but since neither of the Garcia brothers really cared to do much
embalming anymore, and both were impressed with how well Esmeralda
prepared the bodies, she often found herself working alone.

As she walked into the parking lot, she
noticed a man in dark sunglasses watching her. He sat on a
motorcycle with a huge engine and some kind of gargoyle design on
the side. She didn’t recognize him. He was Caucasian instead of
Latino, which made him stick out in this neighborhood, where none
of the signs were written in English. Strange scars dotted his
face, and his hands were sheathed in black leather gloves.

He smiled at her, which made her
uncomfortable. She turned her head away from him to watch the road.
She would have liked to turn her back on him entirely, but that
seemed a little dangerous. Esmeralda stared at the passing traffic
and watched him from the corner of her eye while she waited.

She thought about going back inside, but she
didn’t want to get stuck explaining how she was scared of a man in
the parking lot, who was probably just an early arrival for the
Ortiz viewing.

Hurry up
, Esmeralda thought, watching
the cars pass.

“Hi,” the man spoke behind her. She ignored
him, as if she believed he was speaking to someone else.
“Esmeralda,” he said.

She tensed. She turned back to give him her
best “crawl away and die” look.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Are you sure?” The man slid off his bike. As
he walked toward her, he removed his sunglasses.

When she saw his gray eyes, she heard herself
draw in a sharp breath, and then she completely turned her back on
him. She didn’t know what her face looked like right now, but it
would be full of emotions she didn’t want him to see.

“You are Esmeralda, aren’t you?” He was
walking towards her. “You have to be. You’re as beautiful as I
remember.”

Esmeralda wanted to roll her eyes at him, but
she would have to turn and face him to do that. And then he might
see how she really felt, or how her knees had gone loose and
wobbly.

“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked. He was
standing just behind her now.

“Yes,” she said. She got her face under
control—cool, distant—and finally turned to look at him. She
flicked her eyes up and down him, trying to appear indifferent, but
her heart was skipping. She didn’t even mind the weird dotting of
scars on his face. “You are the devil.”

He laughed, and she liked his smile.

“Your mother said I was a fraud,” Esmeralda
said.

“Foster mother,” he said. “And who cares what
she thinks?”

“She was very insulting. And my mother was
angry.”

“I bet your mother didn’t care once you gave
her the money,” he said.

“I did not give her the money,” Esmeralda
said.

He gave her a surprised look, then laughed
again. “You are sneaky. That’s how I’ve always imagined you. Clever
and sneaky.”

“I didn’t do it so I could keep the
money.”

“Sure. You gave it all to starving orphan
puppies.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Esmeralda said.
“You wouldn’t understand.”

His gray eyes looked into hers. He was only
inches from her now. Her heart gave a flutter.

“I’ve thought about you,” he said. “Over the
years.”

“Have you?” Esmeralda asked. Of course, she’d
thought about him, too. He was the first boy who had kissed her,
and there had been something in his kiss, electric and powerful,
that she had never again felt. Mentally, she scolded herself for
feeling anything at all about him—it had only been one moment, very
long ago.

He reached out a leather-gloved hand and lay
it next to hers, then he wrapped his fingers around her hand.
Esmeralda caught her breath. She didn’t want him to think he could
just grab her up after all these years…but she didn’t exactly want
him to let go of her, either. His touch made him feel more real,
and less like a dream.

Then Pedro’s Acura pulled into the parking
lot.

“Shit!” Esmeralda pulled her hand away and
took a few steps back from him.

“What is it?” the gray-eyed boy asked. He
looked at the Acura pulling into the parking place beside them, and
at Pedro in the driver’s seat. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“My boyfriend,” Esmeralda said.